Darkness, complete darkness.
It feels so comforting. Just the way I seem to float without a care in the world. No work to do, no movements at all. Just me, the darkness, and plenty of rest. I wish such a thing as this could go on forever.
Suddenly, a low beeping noise becomes noticeable. At first, I am able to easily ignore it, whatever it is. I can't tell quite exactly what the noise is anyway. But if I'm honest I don't really care right now. I can just stay right where I am, floating peacefully in the darkness.
Over time the beeping slowly grows louder and louder. I try to block out the noise. But it keeps coming back with a vengance. It grows to such an extent that I begin to feel like it is clawing at my very being.
"Enough!" I mentally shout as I regain control of myself as I slam my fist down on a nearby alarm clock. Now that the dastardly disturber of sleep has been vanquished I have hopes of returning to the dark realm. But alas, the evil beeping hath locked the returning path before I was able to deal with it. No matter.
I open my eyes and begin to wake myself up. As I yawn and stretch out my back, I look at my surroundings. It seems I have fallen asleep at my desk again. My tired mind can't recall much of what happened the night before but it seems that I have gotten a lot of work done. Papers fill up the entire surface area of my desk and my laptop sits in the middle of the chaos. It looks as if it has powered off due to inactivity many hours ago. I look at each and every page. Each one holding new ideas my mind had conjured up the night before. All of them telling a different story of their creation.
Some pages were neat, some were not.
Some pages were filled up completely, while otheres barely held a paragraph.
I studied each of the pages as my memory slowly returned to me. "Ah yes," I say to myself as I remembered my late night brainstorming session. I had finally decided to start writing my own book and it looks like I had stayed up late last night in a creative fervor as I brainstormed many different story ideas.
Well, I guess it is time to stop thinking about what happened last night and begin starting the new day.
I stood up from my office chair, and for a second I seemed to completely lose all balance. This forced me to quickly grab my desk in order to save myself from a fall. After a few seconds I let go and allowed myself to move as my legs finished waking up.
I began to walk over to my bedroom door. Carefully stepping over various disposable coffee cups and other items that littered my bedroom floor. I would have to clean up later. Just because I get lost in my own projects doesn't give me an excuse to leave this place in shuch a mess. But that can wait until I can get some coffee in my system. I reached for the door and opened it.
As I step outside I take a moment to admire the walls of the hallway that lies beyond my bedroom door. In my free time I have managed to fill plenty of space on the walls with my own artwork. From plain sketches, to pictures drawn in crayons. I even had a few paintings of my own hung up on the walls. They each depicted their own images. Whether it be simple landscapes, to characters I thought up when thinking about stories that I had yet to actually get to writing. Each and every thing on these walls that I made was marked with my name "Max Fletcher" in the bottom right corner, just so people would know I made them. If anyone ever saw them that is.
I finished admiring my work and walked down the short hallway to get to the stairs at the end of it. Walking down, I then took a left and was immediately in the kitchen. I owned a small home, but it was perfect just for me. It was inexpensive enough for me to pay for living here using money I got by selling various artwork. I am also the kind of person who just likes to keep to themselves most of the time.
As a kid I would have friends but I always enjoyed my solitude. Mostly because solitude left me to just sit and use my imagination. Such behavior sometimes worried my reachers. Usually they would think that I was being bullied into not playing with the other kids at school, or they thought that I had terible antisocial tendancies. But in truth I just really liked it. I could let my imagination run wild, so I could enjoy my free time by doing stuff like drawing. I amazed myself as a kid with some of the things I could think up. I held my imagination so dear to my heart that I can say with 100% percent certainty that I have never let myself lose an ounce of my childlike wonder and imagination. Mostly because If I had lost any of it I wouldn't know what to do with myself.
This childlike imagination has always caused me to have these bursts of creativity that I expressed in a different way each time. Just last week I bought a blank white coffee mug so I could paint it myself because I thought "Wouldn't it be cool to have my very own one of a kind coffee mug?" Which is quite silly if I am honest, but thats just me.
I walked over to one of my kitchen cabinets and opened it so I could retrieve my mug. Right on the side of it I had painted an anime character with angel wings and a halo over their head. Looking back on it now I figure I was in another one of my weeb phases at the time of making it.
Walking over to the coffee maker, I turned it on and set to work brewing some of that early morning goodness that I swear I am not addicted to.
Once the coffee maker is set up and running, I leaned up against the wall right next to it and wait for it to finish. To pass the time I begin to look around my kitchen. My eyes pass over the boring and mundane objects like the various pots, pans, and cupts. Until they finally rest upon an old painting of mine. It was a beautiful old thing painted by my mother. She had been a lot like me in her youth. She even used to joke that the spirit of an artist had been passed down from her to me at birth. I even have her to thank for all that I know in the arts today. The painting had been the last piece of art she ever made before her passing. I treasure it to this very day.
The painting depicts a beautiful landscape with bright sunny weather, open fields, white fluffy clouds, and mountains that seem to pierce to sky as if they were the pathways to heaven. As I passed the time marveling at it I notice a tiny bit of movement in the painting. One of the clouds seemed to have moved just a tiny bit. I leaned in and rubbed my eyes. When I reopened them and gazed at the painting once more, it had all returned to normal. I figure it must have just been a trick played on me by my tired mind.
It was just then that my coffee maker finished its job. I quickly poured the beverage into my mug and sat down at my kitchen table. As I began to drink I opened up my phone and started checking my emails. A routine I got into a few years ago after I realized just how many emails I was starting to get each day. Making the process of checking and deleting them a necessity unless I wanted to have to go through pages upon pages of useless garbage that I get sent if I wanted to find important stuff later.
As my attention was fully upon my phone while the coffee did its magic, I noticed something in my peripheral vision. Something changed colors somewhere, so I looked up from my phone and looked to whatever just happened. It was the painting again, but now the environment changed. The sky was now covered in dark clouds as if a thunderstorm was about to commence. But such a thing shouldn't be possible because the sky was almost completely clear just a few moments ago.
A little angered by the sudden change to something my late mother had gifted to me, I put my phone back into my pocket and walked over to the painting with mug in hand.
"Maybe someone painted over it while I wasn't looking?" I said aloud. But I live alone, nobody should have been able to do such a thing unless one of my friends broke in to play a prank on me. I'm not usually a violent person but if this is just a silly prank, whichever one of my friends that did this will find themselves in a world of hurt soon. How dare someone mess with what I consider a family treasure
Hoping the new paint could be removed if I act quickly enough, I raised my right index finger to touch the painting. I want to check whether or not the newfound pain is still wet. As my finger touches the painting, I feel that it is completely dry. Hell, it even feels old.
"Odd," I say aloud. I look at the painting and it begins changing right before my very eyes. Mesmerizing streaks of lightning appear in the clouds and everything seems to be in an astounding stop motion like movement. Ripples through the painting mimic the wind, and I can even make out tiny streaks of paint making up the rain in the environment.
I try to pull my finger away from the admittedly beautiful anomoly. But beautiful or not I have no idea if this is dangerous or not. But as I try to pull away, my finger seems to have gotten stuck. I delicately apply more force to try and pull away without damaging the painting. But it simply wont let go.
After a moment I let myself rest and accidentally let my finger push into the painting just a little bit. Then one of the most astounding things in my life occurs right before my eyes. My finger seems to be going throught the painting! But not in the way that I am puncturing the painting. I mean my finger seems to be going inside the picture itself. I can still feel the part of my finger that is inside the painting, wherever it might have gone. I can even feel wind dancing upon my fingertip, with a few rain droplets hitting it as well.
I try to pull away one again, but the painting is actively fighting against me. Some external force even begins to pull the rest of my body through. I keep fighting it but it is no use. After a quick moment it has completely taken hold of me and my entire upper body has gone through. Then it quickly takes the rest of me.
All that is left as evidence of where I once stood is a shattered coffee mug and its contents covering part of my once clean kitchen floor.
After getting pulled through the painting, I have no clue what happened next. When I had gotton to the other side I was already panicked, and when I noticed I was falling out of the sky that made me so scared that I had passed out. My mind just couldn't take it any longer I guess.
I have no clue how long I was out, but when I had finally awoken I was sprawled out on the ground of what looked like a forest. That and EVERYTHING hurt, I never knew what a large drop felt like and I wasn't stupid enough to try and find out. But now that I have discovered what it feels like I just have one thing to say. "Fuck gravity," I proclaim to the world.
Now with that out of my system, I slowly sit up while fighting the terrible ache consuming my body. Although the pain can be a cause for concern later, because right now I have no clue where I am. Looking around I see massive trees surrounding me and covering up most of the sky. It is kind of what I imagined forests to be like berfore humanity had tamed them all back home. The various trees have grown to massive heights, there are thick vines everywhere, and the grass looks like it could go up to my knees in some places. Alongside that, there is absolutely no trace of any nearby civilization, no paths, no footprints, not even discarded trash or anything.
It kind of has its own beauty to it, although a dangerous kind of beauty at that. Looking at this dark forest I can just tell that this is the kind of environment that harbors animals that can and will chew me up and spit me out like I am nothing. Then I trun my gaze to the sky up above. There I see many clouds that look almost exactly like the ones I saw invading my mother's painting. The dark gray clouds swarm the sky with visible arcs of lightning around them.
Seeing this, my body kicks itself into high gear. I can feel the adrenaline take hold as I realize that it is dangerous to be out in the open like this and near trees during a severe storm. I must find shelter soon.
It's a good thing that I fell asleep in my everyday clothes or I would be freezing right about now. I am lucky that I have my long sleeve shirt, my sweatpants, and my shoes on. For I can't imagine what it would be like If I were out here in my pajamas.
I take off at a slow jog into the forest. It's annoying to have to swat away vines and some of the flies that are around. But I managed to get a bit into the forest. As I move I can feel my heart thumping in my chest. I can feel only what I can describe as one of those primal fears that our ancestors developed when humans were still developing in the savana. It begins creeping into my ming, making me aware of each patch of grass and low handing branch where danger might lurk.
Such a thing both helps and doesn't help me. On one side it is good that I am being forced to keep myself alert. But at the same time that fear is building up. I have never been able to handle fear that well and I wish I could handle it well. Right now my mind is still clear enough to realize that this will definately cause me to make one too many mistakes. That or I will have a panic attack. Both aren't very good things for me right now.
I stop running for a second so I can calm myself down. Then I realize something. The forest is eerily quiet. I am surrounded by all of this grass and plenty of trees. Yet I don't hear a single thing. There should at least be some noise around here.Maybe everything is hiding due to the storm. Or everything could be hiding due to a nearby predator. I could possibly be the predator they are scared of. But that wouldn't make sense.
I looked around the forest with weary eyes as I think. From the look of this place, I can tell humans probably haven't been here at all or not in a very long time. If humans have not been here in a very long time then nothing here would know what I am. Humans generally don't look as threatening when compared to other predators. So wildlife generally has to learn to fear us over time. So that means something else is nearby.
Just as that thought flashes through my mind I hear a snap behind me. My adrenaline and panicked state of mind cause me to turn around quickly.
Standing there is something I once thought to be a creature of myth. I read enough mythology and fantasy novels to recognize a Manticore. This massive beast with the body of a lion, the tail of a scorpion, and the wings of a bat was staring me down with a look that clearly identified me as its next "snack."
My mind began to race as I bagan to think over what I knew about animals. I stared the monster down as I thunk about what I was going to do. I am pretty sure things are less likely to attack you if you look bigger. Most likely because nobody ever wants to fight anything large if they can help it.
Taking this into consideration I stretched my body and arms outwards to appear as large as possible to the hungry beast. Then I took in a large breath and yelled "HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA." Right at the monster.
The thing was taken aback. It clearly was not expecting a fight from what looked like some small and frail prey species.
The Manticore then gave me a strangely intelligent look of contemplation. I stared right back at it with baited breath, hoping my tactics would work.
Both of us stood there for what felt like an eternity, but I counted only about 20 seconds passing. Just as it looked like the creature would leave me, it suddenly pounced. I fell back in fear as time seemed to slow to a crawl. I began to think about whether or not this was it. Would I be done for so early because of a gift from my mother? As much as I wanted to, I knew it was too early to see her again. It just wasn't my time. Or was it?
I began to hope and beg in my mind for something, anything to save me from the incomming lion abomination. I curled up into a ball and closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable end. Everything went quiet as time went by.
1... 2... 3... 4... "GONNNNNNNNG."
"What the hell was that?" I exclaimed as held my ringing ears and opened my eyes to look up at what caused the noise.
Instead of seeing the forest or Manticore coming at me, there was what looked like a metal dome surrounding me. After the first noise, everything just stopped. I slowly stood up to get my bearings as I listened.
I can't hear anything from outside, for complete silence had come over the forest. Which is strange because I would expect the Manticore to be trying to get at me still. Standing there I waited a few minutes, carefully paying attention to each of my senses. After the 5 minute mark I started to wish the dome was gone so I could see outside.
Then to my surprise, the entire thing just slowly dematerialized. I stood there in shock for a second and then said "That shouldn't be possible." Then I realized that I could still be in a life or death situation here and I look around. Just a foot away from me I could see the Manticore lying on the ground, completely passed out. The thing even had a comically large bump on its head that I haven't seen since I was a kid watching old cartoons.
It must have hit its head on the dome really hard when said dome appeared. Bad for it, but good for me. I take this chance to immediately dart away from the area. While I am surprised that a dome just suddenly appeared, I will not look a gift horse in the mouth.
But just what caused that dome to appear though?